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42 records · Page 3

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DOE OSTI2021

The importance of kinematic twists and genuine saturation effects in dijet production at the Electron-Ion Collider

We compute the differential yield for quark anti-quark dijet production in high-energy electron-proton and electron-nucleus collisions at small x as a function of the relative momentum P ⊥ and momentum imbalance k ⊥ of the dijet system for different photon virtualities Q 2 , and study the elliptic and quadrangular anisotropies in the relative angle between P ⊥ and k ⊥ . We review and extend the analysis in [1], which compared the results of the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) with those obtained using the transverse momentum dependent (TMD) framework. In particular, we include in our comparison the improved TMD (ITMD) framework, which resums kinematic power corrections of the ratio k ⊥ over the hard scale Q ⊥ . By comparing ITMD and CGC results we are able to isolate genuine higher saturation contributions in the ratio Q s /Q ⊥ which are resummed only in the CGC. These saturation contributions are in addition to those in the Weizsäcker-Williams gluon TMD that appear in powers of Q s /k ⊥ . We provide numerical estimates of these contributions for inclusive dijet production at the future Electron-Ion Collider, and identify kinematic windows where they can become relevant in the measurement of dijet and dihadron azimuthal correlations. We argue that such measurements will allow the detailed experimental study of both kinematic power corrections and genuine gluon saturation effects.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Shining a Light on the Nucleus: Photonuclear Measurements from Correlations to Charmonium

The atomic nucleus is comprised of a collection of nucleons (protons and neutrons), which are bound together by the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction that originates from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). While most nucleons experience the force from the rest of the nu- cleus as a single net “mean-field” interaction that binds them relatively weakly, a small but impactful fraction are in configurations called “Short-Range Correlations” (SRCs), in which they pair with another nucleon at very short distance to experience strong interactions, sig- nificant binding, and high momentum. Hard, high-energy scattering reactions in which an SRC pair is broken apart, knocking both nucleons out of the nucleus, provide the ability to probe the details of these SRC configurations in the nucleus. Previous measurements have had limited statistics and kinematic reach, and the theoretical tools available were in- sufficient to draw quantitative conclusions regarding the ground-state properties of SRCs. The studies described in this thesis represent the first global analysis of SRC breakup mea- surements in order to present a unified picture of SRCs within light- to medium-size nuclei. This includes the use of a novel theoretical framework, the Generalized Contact Formalism, which connects scattering cross-section measurements and the ground-state properties of the SRC pair, to quantitatively interpret a variety of electron-scattering measurements. This is brought to culmination by a report on the first measurement of SRC pairs via the use of hard meson photoproduction reactions, which, despite differing significantly from the me- chanics of electron-scattering, is well-described under a common framework, pointing to a consistent and universal picture of SRCs across reaction channels. I also report on the first measurement of J/¿ photoproduction in the near- and below-threshold kinematic region, giving the first insights to the gluonic structure of bound nucleons in the large-x “valence” region and providing constraints on a gluonic “EMC effect”. In addition to these studies, I provide details on the search for Primakoff production of axion-like particles using the pho- toproduction data taken for this experiment, and I conclude by describing studies of nucleon spin structure measurements that will be performed at the forthcoming U.S. Electron-Ion Collider.

Pybus, Jackson↗

DOE OSTI2025

Description of di-hadron saturation signals within a universal nuclear parton distribution function approach

Di-hadron and di-jet correlation measurements in proton-nucleus (𝑝+𝐴) and electron-nucleus collisions are widely motivated as sensitive probes of novel, nonlinear quantum chromodynamices saturation dynamics in hadrons, which are particularly accessible in the dense nuclear environment at low values of Bjorken-𝑥 (𝑥 A ). Current measurements at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) observe a significant suppression in the per-trigger yield at forward rapidities compared to that in proton-proton collisions, nominally consistent with the “mono-jet” production expected in a saturation scenario. However, the width of the azimuthal correlation remains unmodified, in contradiction to the qualitative expectations from this physics picture. I investigate whether the construction of these observables leaves them sensitive to effects from simple nuclear shadowing as captured by, for example, universal nuclear parton distribution function (nPDF) analyses. I find that modern nPDF sets, informed by recent precision measurements sensitive to the shadowing of low-𝑥 A gluon densities in LHC and other data, can describe all or the majority of the di-hadron/jet suppression effects in 𝑝+𝐴 data at both RHIC and the LHC, while giving a natural explanation for why the azimuthal correlation width is unmodified. Notably, this is achieved via a (𝑥 A ,𝑄 2 )-differential suppression of overall cross sections only, without requiring additional physics dynamics which alter the interevent correlations.

Jets & heavy flavor physics↗

DOE OSTI2020

Comparison of improved TMD and CGC frameworks in forward quark dijet production

For studying small- x gluon saturation in forward dijet production in high-energy dilute-dense collisions, the improved TMD (ITMD) factorization formula was recently proposed. In the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) framework, it represents the leading term of an expansion in inverse powers of the hard scale. It contains the leading-twist TMD factorization formula relevant for small gluon’s transverse momentum k t , but also incorporates an all-order resummation of kinematical twists, resulting in a proper matching to high-energy factorization at large k t . In this paper, we evaluate the accuracy of the ITMD formula quantitatively, for the case of quark dijet production in high-energy proton-proton( p + p ) and proton-nucleus ( p + A ) collisions at LHC energies. We do so by comparing the quark-antiquark azimuthal angle Δ ϕ distribution to that obtained with the CGC formula. For a dijet with each quark momentum p t much larger than the target saturation scale, Q s , the ITMD formula is a good approximation to the CGC formula in a wide range of azimuthal angle. It becomes less accurate as the jet p t ’s are lowered, as expected, due to the presence of genuine higher-twists contributions in the CGC framework, which represent multi-body scattering effects absent in the ITMD formula. We find that, as the hard jet momenta are lowered, the accuracy of ITMD start by deteriorating at small angles, in the high-energy-factorization regime, while in the TMD regime near Δ ϕ = π , very low values of p t are needed to see differences between the CGC and the ITMD formula. In addition, the genuine twists corrections to ITMD become visible for higher values of p t in p + A collisions, compared to p + p collisions, signaling that they are enhanced by the target saturation scale.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2022

Searching for an Enhanced Signal of the Onset of Color Transparency in Baryons with D(e,e′p)n Scattering

Observation of the onset of color transparency in baryons would provide a new means of studying the nuclear strong force and would be the first clear evidence of baryons transforming into a color-neutral point-like size in the nucleus as predicted by quantum chromodynamics. Recent C(e,e′p) results from electron-scattering did not observe the onset of color transparency (CT) in protons up to spacelike four-momentum transfers squared, Q2=14.2 GeV2. The traditional methods of searching for CT in (e,e′p) scattering use heavy targets favoring kinematics with already initially reduced final state interactions (FSIs) such that any CT effect that further reduces FSIs will be small. The reasoning behind this choice is the difficulty in accounting for all FSIs. D(e,e′p)n, on the other hand, has well-understood FSI contributions from double scattering with a known dependence on the kinematics and can show an increased sensitivity to hadrons in point-like configurations. Double scattering is the square of the re-scattering amplitude in which the knocked-out nucleon interacts with the spectator nucleon, a process that is suppressed in the presence of point-like configurations and is particularly well-studied for the deuteron. This suppression yields a quadratic sensitivity to CT effects and is strongly dependent on the choice of kinematics. Here, we describe a possible Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) electron-scattering experiment that utilizes these kinematics and explores the potential signal for the onset of CT with enhanced sensitivity as compared to recent experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Observation of Coherent 𝜙⁡(1020) Meson Photoproduction in Ultraperipheral PbPb Collisions at $\sqrt{𝑠_{NN}}$ = 5.36 TeV

The first observation of coherent 𝜙⁡(1020) meson photoproduction off heavy nuclei is presented using ultraperipheral lead-lead collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.36 TeV. The data were collected by the CMS experiment and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 1.62 μ⁢𝑏 −1 . The 𝜙⁡(1020) meson signals are reconstructed via the 𝐾 + ⁢𝐾 − decay channel. The production cross section is presented as a function of the 𝜙⁡(1020) meson rapidity in the range 0.3 < |𝑦| < 1.0, probing gluons that carry a fraction of the nucleon momentum (𝑥) around 10 −4 . The observed cross section exhibits little dependence on rapidity and is significantly suppressed, by a factor of ∼5, compared to a baseline model that treats a nucleus as a collection of free nucleons. Theoretical models that incorporate the nuclear shadowing effect generally provide a better description of the 𝜙⁡(1020) data than those incorporating gluon saturation. This study establishes a powerful new tool for exploring nuclear effects and nuclear gluonic structure in the small-𝑥 regime at a unique energy scale bridging the perturbative and nonperturbative quantum chromodynamics domains.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗